I've ended up disabling the HUD because I find it useless. It never finds what I want and I realized I was spending enormous amounts of time putzing with it trying to find what I wanted. whereas with the old traditional menus I move much much quicker and know where I'm going once I look them over.

I do really, really like the Global Menus that show on the Panel when a window is maximized though. I think this is one of the greatest things about Unity.

IMHO Unity is best with Traditional Menus that display on the Panel on maximized windows and no HUD ;)

Anybody disagree? Where do you find HUD useful?

MG&TL

May 20th, 2012, 10:07 PM

Big applications make it worthwhile. If you spend any serious time with the likes of inkscape, the GIMP, or any of the libreoffice-* applications, it usually saves a lot of time, particularly after aa bit of practice.

But for everyday uses, I have to say I also find it a bit useless. But definitely a step forward in terms of design.

Bandit

May 20th, 2012, 10:13 PM

try using single letters with spaces to hunt what your looking for for example in GEdit. F (space) O goes to File Open. Though some menus are seriously not that friendly. It could use some improvement, but its getting there.

VTPoet

May 20th, 2012, 10:41 PM

Agreed. I tried it and found it useless. I suspect it's useful to power users? Libre Office allows me to assign keystrokes to more commonly used features.

nrundy

May 20th, 2012, 10:42 PM

Agreed. I tried it and found it useless. I suspect it's useful to power users? Libre Office allows me to assign keystrokes to more commonly used features.

with LibreOffice I always use the context-menu key to access shortcuts, like to get to font, size, bold, etc.

nrundy

May 30th, 2012, 08:11 PM

Most of the time HUD doesn't even work. Like just the other day I'm in LibreOffice and I use HUD to type "export". It can find nothing with export in it. Yet when I open the File menu, there's two Export options.

Obviously, it's not fully baked.

The thing that irks me is that when I disable HUD using the System Settings keyboard section, it "breaks" the traditional menus. Like tapping Alt+T A will not work to open Firefox add-ons if HUD is disabled. Yet with HUD enabled, this shortcut works fine.

Was really hoping for a bug-free LTS experience but still not there. Hopefully T will be better.

MadmanRB

May 30th, 2012, 08:39 PM

The HUD is more interesting then it is practical

philinux

May 30th, 2012, 08:43 PM

Most of the time HUD doesn't even work. Like just the other day I'm in LibreOffice and I use HUD to type "export". It can find nothing with export in it. Yet when I open the File menu, there's two Export options.

Obviously, it's not fully baked.

The thing that irks me is that when I disable HUD using the System Settings keyboard section, it "breaks" the traditional menus. Like tapping Alt+T A will not work to open Firefox add-ons if HUD is disabled. Yet with HUD enabled, this shortcut works fine.

Was really hoping for a bug-free LTS experience but still not there. Hopefully T will be better.

MS was quoted as saying it's optional. And I suspect a work in progress.

xedi

May 30th, 2012, 08:50 PM

I don't use it regularly but it has come in handy. E.g. I never can remember how to crop in GIMP (don't laugh :( ), but with HUD I find the crop tool fast. I forgot what exactly but I wanted to find some option in firefox the other day and didn't know where it is because I usually use Chrome, so HUD helped me out there too

It's not (yet) the revolution but I do think it is already useful today and has potential.

BTW It works with LibreOffice if you install the lo-menubar. Hopefully LibreOffice will have global menus by Ubuntu 12.10

xedi

May 30th, 2012, 09:12 PM

After posting this some moments ago, I find myself using HUD a lot in shotwell :D Publishing a single picture you are looking at and undoing stuff works very well with HUD.

Mikeb85

May 31st, 2012, 06:57 AM

I think the usefulness of HUD depends alot on the program, and whether those who created/modified it took the time to make it work well with HUD. To me, HUD is a huge leap forward in functionality, but by it's very nature it's up to each program to take advantage of its usefulness.

nrundy

June 1st, 2012, 04:20 PM

I don't use it regularly but it has come in handy. E.g. I never can remember how to crop in GIMP (don't laugh :( ), but with HUD I find the crop tool fast. I forgot what exactly but I wanted to find some option in firefox the other day and didn't know where it is because I usually use Chrome, so HUD helped me out there too

It's not (yet) the revolution but I do think it is already useful today and has potential.

BTW It works with LibreOffice if you install the lo-menubar. Hopefully LibreOffice will have global menus by Ubuntu 12.10

Ahh. lo-menubar real buggy for me so I didn't install. But your right, when this is implemented that will help HUD for LO.

Dry Lips

June 1st, 2012, 05:54 PM

Did you guys see this:

Precision and purpose: Ubuntu 12.04 and the Unity HUD reviewed
"The HUD is an excellent addition to Unity. It’s also arguably the best and most impressive new feature in Ubuntu 12.04. Although it’s already quite useful, there is a lot of potential for future enhancement. We are really looking forward to seeing how it continues to evolve in future releases."http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/precision-and-purpose-ubuntu-12-04-and-the-unity-hud-reviewed/

inashdeen

June 1st, 2012, 05:59 PM

Hey, HUD is still new, but really practical. I show it to my windows user friends, and the were amazed by it.

HUD is the sort of thing you can use to run things that pops in your mind. is like, in gimp for example, people play with filters, and sometimes you need to be quick on the job. without HUD, one need to perform a 3 step filter > distort > blind to blind the particular picture. imagine if a person had to run the same job, like 20 times to make the picture look perfect. with hud, you just type fil.. and bam, the suggestion comes out. many user are faster on the keyboard than mouse, so i do believe that it is time saving.

we cant really judge it since it is still new.

Bandit

June 1st, 2012, 11:23 PM

After posting this some moments ago, I find myself using HUD a lot in shotwell :D Publishing a single picture you are looking at and undoing stuff works very well with HUD.

Its got a huge learning curve. At least each program has a learning curve to make HUD a productive tool. Finding using GIMP or any multi dialog interface bothersome at times. For example if you create a new layer then want to access the menus on the main dialog you must first click the main dialog if not hitting Alt will not work. Guess newer GIMP may work better, but I have a drawing tablet and GIMP team recommends holding out until its fully GTK3.

fluteflute

June 5th, 2012, 09:23 AM

When I first heard about the HUD I definitely went "ooh, that looks very cool".

I simply haven't used it over the last few months.

That doesn't bother me though. Two reasons. Firstly it's undoubtedly going to improve over the next few releases. And secondly, it's an incredibly unobtrusive feature which I can ignore without any effects.

zombifier25

June 5th, 2012, 11:32 AM

GIMP is a cesspool of menus. The HUD makes working on applications like GIMP really fast. For other apps that has only a few number of menus, the HUD is not really necessary.

Mark Shuttleworth stated that the HUD is open for improvements. Which is why there are no obvious-looking buttons to open the HUD. It was included in 12.04 as a (IMO) tech preview, and it was intended that normal users who did not do any research wouldn't have to know about the HUD anyway.

Yeah I read that review. (HATE the new Ars Technica website by the way! Really miss the old website which was one of the best layed out and performing websites around. The new one really stinks!)

I don't agree with Ryan about HUD. I'm much more impressed with the Launcher enhancements and scrollbar enhancements and even with the integration of the titlebar into the Panel with global menu than I am with HUD. The problems with the global menu should be addressed with Quantal and the addition of the new dropdown menu thingy--forget what its called.

JeyPeyy

December 27th, 2012, 02:16 PM

Waking up an old thread, but this is something that really intrigues me and I want to speak out about it.

The idea that you can search after application functions by typing on the keyboard is great, and is something we should hold on to. But having a global menu doesn't make that much sense nowadays IMO. I get the whole Fitt's law thing, but I think it's more important that the position makes sense. Global menus made sense in the 80's when you didn't run more than one application at the same time and there were multiple windows that shared the menu functions. Nowadays you have multiple applications next to each others with different menu objects, so it doesn't make sense to have a global menu.

I'm not really a fan of the traditional menu with categories in a horizontal bar either. I prefer the approach in Windows used by some applications with a menu button in the titlebar, like firefox (http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m195/ffextensionguru/fx420updates20menu.png). If they had a search bar inside that menu it would be the best of the two worlds. If it was made in ubuntu with compiz we could make it sexy by using the dash color and blur too ;)

OluszDes

December 27th, 2012, 07:29 PM

If you are looking for an app or a file, use Dash instead of HUD. All you have to do is push the super key and write your 1st letter. If the the app or file doesn't appear, write the next letter. Chances that you'd have your app or file link on the screen is very high. You don't have to keep looking at the screen, just push the super key and write the first two letters. If you have so many apps and files in your partition, you may have to write the 3rd letter. (I don't use Unity, but I know it works that way. I have Unity and I tried it right now.) HUD doesn't work that way, so don't use it and get depressed. Dash would do all the work for you.

deadflowr

December 27th, 2012, 08:14 PM

HUD can be pretty useless if you don't know the menu commands you want.

rexik

July 2nd, 2013, 10:05 PM

I have found HUD worthless for me when I use the desktop in other than English. I type anything in it and it shows literally random stuff that have zero connection to what I typed. I don't have English as the primary option in my system, so I removed HUD. These instructions worked http://askubuntu.com/questions/210387/how-can-i-disable-hud-service

The reasons for disabling HUD:

- Single key activation (ALT) is intrusive for something I don't need.
- I need the key (ALT) in Opera browser that I use a lot. The key kept bringing up both functions when I used the browser.
- The HUD process, which I don't use, is regularly no. 2 consumer of the CPU. Too much for something I don't need.

mips

July 3rd, 2013, 04:20 PM

EDIT: Removed.

Duh! Posted in wrong thread...

Copper Bezel

July 3rd, 2013, 07:30 PM

I wish I remembered the HUD on those occasions that I'm using an app that both has a use for its menus and supports the HUD. It's brilliant in GIMP, when I remember that it's there. Also nice for Glippy (my clipboard manager) if, again, I ever remembered that it was an available option.

Most apps just don't need the menu bar, or rarely do; I need the menu bar in LibreOffice, but of course, it doesn't work with the HUD.